Mile of Music headlining shows

Note: Tickets for the two headliner shows will go on sale June 6 at www.mileofmusic.com. They’ll cost $30 each night. Information on additional performances is expected to be released in the coming weeks.

Cory Chisel back in Appleton

Cory Chisel and the Wandering Sons will perform at a CHAPS Academy benefit show at 8 p.m. Friday at the OuterEdge Stage in Appleton. Tickets are $25 and available at www.chapsacademy.org.

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The mystery surrounding the Mile of Music artist lineup is beginning to dissipate.

Veteran alt-country singer and songwriter Rodney Crowell will top the bill for the inaugural Appleton festival with a headlining performance at the Lawrence Memorial Chapel Aug. 10.

Supporting Crowell will be the singer-songwriter Justin Townes Earle, along with Mel Flannery Trucking Co. from New York and Christopher Gold of the Dirty Rotten So & So’s.

Cory Chisel and the Wandering Sons will handle headlining duties at the chapel Aug. 9, supported by New York’s the Candles, which features three members of Norah Jones’ touring band, Pete Remm of the Candles as a solo act and the Hillary Reynolds Band, a folk-pop group with Fox Valley roots.

Today’s unveiling of the headliners marks the first announcements regarding who will be playing at the multi-venue downtown Appleton festival.

Tickets will go on sale June 6 at www.mileofmusic.com. Headline Stage tickets, which cover the Lawrence Memorial Chapel shows, will go for $30 each night. Festival attendees purchasing the $99 VIP ticket package will be allowed to select one of the two Headline Stage lineups, along with one of the still-to-be-announced Feature Stage lineups. Tickets are required for only a small number of the festival’s 120-plus performances.

The 62-year-old Crowell is a well-traveled and critically acclaimed artist whose career includes 13 studio albums, dating back to his 1978 debut, “Ain’t Living Long Like This.” The Grammy Award-winner’s resume includes five straight No. 1 hits from 1988’s “Diamonds & Dirt.”

Crowell, who released a memoir in 2011, is currently touring with Emmylou Harris, and the two released an album of duets, “Old Yellow Moon,” in March.

Earle is the 31-year-old son of country artist Steve Earle and released his fourth album, “Nothing’s Gonna Change the Way You Feel About Me Now” in 2012. Rolling Stone ranked it the No. 37 album of the year, writing “The son of country-rock renegade Steve Earle has grown into a songwriter to rival his dad.”

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Chisel, the Appleton-raised musician who is spearheading the festival along with his team of industry professionals and Willems Marketing, said it wasn’t a hard sell to get Earle on board.

“I think I approached it — ‘I know a town that you would love to see and you haven’t been there yet,’” said Chisel, who toured with Earle in 2012.

“It’s a choice that we make. We have an affinity for a lot of the same kind of clubs, and I think that helps in recommending a town like Appleton. We like to get off the beaten trail a little bit, both of us do.”

Chisel and Earle formed a friendship over the years thanks to shared sensibilities, which made Mile of Music a great fit.

“Well you know, it’s funny, we have a friendship like a lot of musicians have friendships,” said Earle by phone from Nashville. “We see each other about three times a year at a festival or something like that. But you know. This business is so full … of people who don’t deserve to be where they’re at and don’t work. Cory’s always been very hard working and he’s always had a vision, an idea of what he was going for and that’s a lot more easy to comprehend than somebody who has no clue where they’re going.”

Mile of Music will take place over the weekend of Aug. 8-11, featuring live music hosted by a variety of venues, mostly downtown bars and restaurants. About 120 shows are planned at 40 locations.

Chisel has been tasked with gathering up the talent for the festival, which follows a similar premise as the annual South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, but on a smaller scale.

Earle, 2011 winner of the Americana Music Associations’ song of the year for “Harlem River Blues,” said he’s seen an influx of musician-led festivals and it’s easy to see why the idea is catching on.

“Here in the past three years, especially the past year, I’ve done a lot of festivals curated by artists,” said Earle. “The average people trust the musicians to put something together more than they do some unknown man at a desk somewhere.”

Proceeds from the festival will go to two new funds: the Mile of Music fund within the Appleton Education Foundation, which seeks to provide more music opportunities for public school students, and the Creative Downtown fund to provide seed money for projects that add or sustain creativity in downtown Appleton.

More artists booked to play Mile of Music will be announced in the weeks ahead. The acts will feature Americana music with a focus on original songwriting. Indie rock, country, roots, folk, gospel, R&B and jazz are among the genres to be represented.